Below the Line with a science enthusiast WelshmanEC2: 'People who get things wrong make me angry!'

Jupiter as seen by Voyager 1 at a distance of more than 28.4 million kilometers, or 17.5 million miles. “My favourite scientific discovery is Galileo’s discovery of Jupiter’s four big moons. It’s a discovery anyone could make, with a small, simple telescope” Photograph: Unknown/NASA/Roger Ressmeyer/CORBIS

BTL (below the line) is a weekly profile of a particularly delightful, prolific or controversial member of our vibrant comment community. This week, we’re featuring another commenter from our Comment is free section. If you’d like to be featured, or nominate another worthy character, tell us in the comments!

WelshmanEC2 joined the Guardian in 2009. He’s made 946 comments and introduces himself as: “Left the green green grass of rural west Wales about twenty five years ago, to seek my fortune in London. Still looking.”

So, why science?

I don’t really know, I just always have been. Probably because science isn’t opinion and one person’s view isn’t more worthy than another just because of who they are. If the science is right then it’s right, no matter who you are. This is especially so in maths, physics and cosmology. You just report what you see and give a suggestion as to why things behave that way. For instance, by making observations and doing some maths, I could come up with laws of motion – and they’d turn out to be the same as Newton’s.

My main areas of interest are maths, physics, astronomy and evolution - all at the “enthusiastic amateur” level. This year I need to go out with my telescope at least every month. I’m not a great astronomer, I could probably recognise a dozen or so constellations without a reference book, but that’s improving every year. Now, when is it going to stop raining?

What’s your favourite scientific discovery?

So many to choose from, but probably Galileo’s discovery of Jupiter’s four big moons. It’s a discovery anyone could make, with a small, simple telescope. Look at Jupiter even with binoculars and you’ll see four dots in a line close to it. Look again a couple of hours later and they’re still there, but in different positions. It’s a simple task to plot their movements over a period of say a month and realise that their behaviour is most easily explained if they are orbiting Jupiter. Put these sketches into a little flip-book and you have yourself an animation of their orbits. That really brings it to life. No great scientific skill or knowledge required, just a bit of patience and a methodical approach.

What science story do you think deserves more coverage?

I’d like to see more basic science, but explained accurately. Most people are capable of understanding o-level or even a-level science if it’s explained properly and methodically. It’d stop some of the howlers that get posted as scientific fact.

Tell me about the comments or commenters that make you most angry

People who get things wrong! Actually, it’s people who get things wrong because they don’t take the time to apply logic, simple arithmetic or the scientific method to a situation.

Also anything inappropriately apostrophised.

Do you have a favourite comment that you or someone else has posted?

Someone once posted a physicist’s eulogy, i.e. how a physicist sees life and death. I loved it. I’ve kept it and it’s going to be used at my funeral. And sorry, but I can’t remember who posted it first – and they deserve credit:

“You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your broken-hearted spouse there in the pew and tell him/her that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let him/her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her/his eyes, that those photons created within her/him constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around.

According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly.”

If you were a science publication which one would you be and why?

I’d be Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS - because it sounds a bit like Penis and always makes me smile.

Complete this sentence: Science commenters on the Guardian are….

... infinitely varied, but too many of the “wrong type” can really spoil your day!